22 June 1918: birth of David Ellis (real name David Kerkham), who co-wrote The Faceless Ones (1967) with Malcolm Hulke.
22 June 1953: birth of Ian Levine, among other things continuity consultant to John Nathan Turner.
22 June 2010: death of Pennant Roberts, who directed The Face of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1977), The Sun Makers (Fourth Doctor, 1977), The Pirate Planet (Fourth Doctor, 1978), Shada (Fourth Doctor, unbroadcast but would have been 1980), Warriors of the Deep (Fifth Doctor, 1984) and Timelash (Sixth Doctor, 1985).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
None, the second day of the year for which this is the case.
Second paragraph of third story (“Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” by Vandana Singh):
I was once a man, a poet, a teller of tales, but I am long dead now. I lived in the eleventh century of the Common Era in northern India. Then we could only dream of that fabulous device, the udan-khatola, the ship that flies between worlds. Then, the sky-dwelling Vidyadharas were myth, occupying a reality different from our own. And the only wings I had with which to make my journeys were those of my imagination. . . .
I assume that this was published partly in response to the Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, published in 2009, which contained 21 stories all by white men. This one contains 33 excellent stories by women writers, a couple of which I already knew, some of which were new to me, all reprints and almost all good. A casual reference to a distant relative of mine in Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Science of Herself” prompted me to do some family research; I particularly liked Ekaterina Sedia’s “A Short Encyclopedia of Lunar Seas”; but basically I was kicking myself for having acquired this way back in 2014 and not yet read it. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on that list is Fish Tails by Sherri S. Tepper.
Sun, 23:39: RT @Mij_Europe: Le Pen’s predecessor & father, Jean-Marie, generally outscored opinion polls in elections. Marine Le Pen has now underscore…
Mon, 10:45: ‘I am very shy. It’s amazing I became a movie star’: Leslie Caron at 90 on love, art and addiction https://t.co/XOfPrVq2tT Lovely interview with one of my favourites.
21 June 1991: death of Ivor Salter, who had three roles in Old Who – the Morok Commander in the story we now call The Space Museum (First Doctor, 1965), Odysseus in the story we now call The Myth Makers (also First Doctor, 1965) and Sergeant Markham in Black Orchid (Fifth Doctor, 1982). But for my selfish purposes, he was also the semi-regular policeman in Here Come the Double Deckers!
ii) broadcast anniversaries
21 June 1969: broadcast of tenth episode of The War Games, ending Season 6 of Old Who. Last regular appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie and Wendy Padbury as Zoe.
21 June 2008: broadcast of Turn Left. Donna is thrust into an alternate universe where the Doctor was killed during the events of The Runaway Bride, and the situation continues to deteriorate until she sacrifices herself to change her previous self’s destiny.
21 June 2010: broadcast of The Last Precinct, twenty-fourth episode of the Australian K9 series. A vigilante group of former police officers discover the Department are upgrading the CCPCs with alien tech. They make a stand by holding Gryffen hostage. K9 and Starkey battle the intruders whilst Darius faces up to his past.
iii) dates specified in canon
21 June 2540: birth of Bernice Summerfield (at least according to the 1999 Big Finish audio Just War).
A gradual feeling of return to normality. The Belgian COVID numbers are really tumbling at the moment – ICU beds down 29% from a week ago, hospital beds 36%, deaths 37% and infections a whopping 45%. More than haf the population has been vaccinated with at least one dose, more than two thirds of those over 18. The government further reduced restrictions on Friday. We are heading towards the ECDC’s Green Zone – we won’t hit the criteria by next Tuesday, but I think it’s quite likely that we will by the Tuesday after.
On Thursday we had another work party, this time at Place Rouppe; when I arrived, Belgium were already 1-0 down to Denmark, but they managed to pull ahead by the end, no doubt due to the encouragement sent from afar by me and one of my other Belgian colleagues, who had come suitably equipped.
As well as a nice family outing to our local thousand-year-old churches last weekend, we celebrated B’s birthday yesterday. Last year it was the first time we had seen her since the first lockdown. This year she was in an odd mood – came happily for a drive in the car, got very upset when we brought her to what is usually a favourite place, the ruined Paterskerk in Tienen, but calmed down when we brought her back to her home and started feeding her strawberries. F managed to take one good picture of her sitting with me and Anne, which got a gratifying response on social media.
B’s birthday is not actually an easy day for us; it is another reminder of milestones not reached.
But the weather is good, and despite Worldcon hassles and Northern Ireland being in disarray, I bought bacon from the British shop on Friday and have been doing fried breakfasts this weekend. Very cheering.
Sat, 12:56: Got this as a promoted tweet. Would loved to know what algorithm predicted (incorrectly) that I would find it of any interest, and how much the advertiser paid to get it in front of my indifferent eyeballs. https://t.co/h0fE3HtWKT
20 June 1929: birth of Paul Bernard, who directed Day of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1972), The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and co-directed Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1983).
ii) broadcast and publication anniversaries
20 June 1964: broadcast of "Strangers in Space", first episode of the story we now call The Sensorites. The Tardis lands on a spaceship whose crew have been incapacitated by the mysterious Sensorites.
20 June 1970: broadcast of seventh episode of Inferno, ending Season 7 of Old Who; last regular appearance of Caroline John as Liz Shaw. The Doctor and Liz prevent the drill from breaking through the crust; Stahlman is completely transformed into a Primord and is restrained.
20 June 1991: publication of Timewyrm: Genesys by Terrance Dicks, first in the run of New Adventures published by Virgin.
20 June 2007 or 2008: setting of the 2008 Torchwood episode, To the Last Man.
On 31 May 1889, a dam collapsed 14 km north of Johnstown, in southwest Pennsylvania, and 2209 people were killed in the consequent flood. It was the worst death toll for a single accident in US history. (More died on 9/11 and at Pearl Harbour, but those were not accidents; and extreme weather and disease have also been more deadly.)
The large earthen dam had originally been built by the Pennsylvania state authorities forty years before, to feed the canal system, just in time for the canals to be replaced by rail. It was sold to a group of Pittsburgh investors who converted the lake and dam into an exclusive leisure resort – mainly fishing, no doubt some hunting as well. Members included the fabulously wealthy Andrew Carnegie, banker and future Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and future Attorney-General and Secretary of State Philander Knox. But they did not maintain the dam properly, patching it with mud and straw. On 29 and 30 May 1889, that part of Pennsylvania received the highest rainfall ever recorded there, around 200 mm.
The hunters and fishers spotted that there was a problem on the morning of the 31st, and did their best to shore up the crumbling dam, also telegraphing warnings downstream to Johnstown, where nobody listened because they had had too many false alarms before. The dam broke and 14.5 million cubic metres of water tipped down the narrow valley, hitting Johnstown with a wall of liquid 18m high in places, travelling at about 60 kph. It had already smashed through the iron works at nearby Woodvale. The valley was devastated.
Much debris was found as the clearing up began, including this poignant story of a wandering horse and its lost owner, reported in the Indiana Weekly Messenger of 5 June 1889:
A Treacherous Pole.
A horse, supposed to be the one upon which Robert Wickersham was riding when the flood overtook him and he climbed a telegraph pole, was found upon the premises of a farmer back of Woodvale. The horse had apparently been in the woods for several days, and was almost starved. Upon his back was a saddle, which was supposed to be owned by Mr. Wickersham. The farmer will keep the horse until called for. Mr. Wickersham was the chief draughtsman at the Johnson Steel company’s works.
Wickersham was seen to climb up the pole until he reached the cross-arms, where he rested. He apparently thought he was safe, and yelled to a number of people to run up the hill out of the water’s reach. In a few minutes the pole “sagged” and tipped over. Wickersham still clung to it and the pole began to drop lower and lower. All of a sudden the pole give a lurch and fell into the water. Wickersham disappeared from view and was seen no more. The people living in the row of frame houses on the hillside opposite saw him as he went down.
Wickersham’s name was actually Richard, not Robert. He was one of the 980 victims of the flood whose body was never found. He is recorded as 26 years old in the accident reports, but in fact was only 24. Born in Pittsburgh, he did not have time to go very far in his life; Johnstown is a bit over 100 km to the east of the Steel City. His oldest surviving brother administered what there was of his estate (including, I suppose, the unfortunate horse). Two years later, in 1891, their sister Rebecca married Henry Deming Hibbard (an iron man, like the Wickershams’ father Samuel) and in due course Rebecca and Henry became my great-grandparents. Poor Robert or Richard Wickersham was my grandmother’s uncle, though she was not born until 1899, ten years later, and she would have known him only as one of several dead members of her parents’ generation.
Even so, it’s an unexpectedly powerful sense of connection to a massive disaster. Look after those dams, folks…
Fri, 17:11: RT @guybanim: To quote @Tom_deWaal “If you want to understand what’s happening in NI, don’t bother with the newspapers, just read @nwbrux “…
19 June 1916: birth of George Pravda, who played Denes in The Enemy of the World (Second Doctor, 1967-68), Jaeger in The Mutants (Third Doctor, 1972) and Castellan Spandrell in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
19 June 1997: death of Julia Smith, who directed The Smugglers (First Doctor, 1966) and The Underwater Menace (Second Doctor, 1967) and but is of course better known and the creator of EastEnders.
19 June 2017: death of Brian Cant, who I knew as one of the great BBC children's presenters of the 1970s but before then had appeared in The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965) as Kert Gantry and The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968) as Tensa. Both characters are doomed. His son Richard Cant turns up in Blink (Tenth Doctor, 2007) as Kathy Nightingale's grandson Malcolm.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
19 June 1965: broadcast of "The Death of Doctor Who", fifth episode of the story we now call The Chase. The Daleks construct a double of the Doctor to try and infiltrate the Tardis crew. (This also features the fungoids, by far the worst monsters ever.)
19 June 2010: broadcast of The Pandorica Opens. Echoes of recent adventures and of monsters recently encountered bring the Doctor and Amy, joined by River Song and a resurrected Rory, to the mysterious Pandorica.
Last books finished A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, by Lynell George The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, ed. Alex Dally MacFarlane Don't Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech, by Rana Foroohar All Among the Barley, by Melissa Harrison Beowulf: A New Translation, by Maria Dahvana Headley Beowulf: A New Translation, by Seamus Heaney Roger Zelazny's The Dawn of Amber: Book 1, by John Gregory Betancourt Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins Boys in Zinc, by Svetlana Alexievich
Next books
"Stories For Men", by John Kessel The Monster's Wife, by Kate Horsley
Thu, 12:09: Midnight breakthrough saves Northern Ireland power-sharing https://t.co/9IvOD7vhKS Very poor strategically from new DUP leadership. It shows them as being unable to make tough decisions in government, preferring instead to appeal to a dwindling pool of voters. An unforced error.
Thu, 22:10: RT @StephenNolan: Senior DUP source has just told me he expects DUP party officers will inform Edwin Poots today they have no confidence in…
Fri, 05:53: RT @ElectionMapsUK: Chesham & Amersham results since the formation of the constituency at the the Feb 1974 General Election: https://t.co/9…
18 June 1938: birth of Michael Sheard, who played Rhos in The Ark (First Doctor, 1966), Dr. Summers in The Mind of Evil (Third Doctor, 1971), Laurence Scarman in Pyramids of Mars (Fourth Doctor, 1975), Lowe in The Invisible Enemy (Fourth Doctor, 1977), the Mergrave in Castrovalva (Fifth Doctor, 1982), and the Headmaster in Remembrance of the Daleks (Seventh Doctor, 1988). I'm not sure if any other actor has played six different Doctor Who parts of that weight.
18 June 1946: birth of Luan Peters, who played the second version of Chicki in The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967) and Sheila in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1974).
18 June 1973: death of Roger Delgado in a car accident in Turkey; he had played the original Master from 1971-73.
18 June 1991: death of Ronald Allen, who played Rago in The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968) and Ralph Cornish in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970).
18 June 2004: death of Frederick Jaeger, who played Jano in The Savages (First Doctor, 1966), Sorenson in Planet of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1975), and Prof. Marius in The Invisible Enemy (Fourth Doctor, 1977).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
18 June 1966: broadcast of fourth episode of The Savages
18 June 2005: broadcast of The Parting of the Ways, ending the first season of New Who; last appearance of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. The Doctor tries to send Rose back to her own time, but she manages to gain the energy from the Tardis, which she and the Doctor use to destroy the Daleks – at the cost of the Doctor's ninth incarnation.
Not very long ago at all, I was writing about the DUP after Arlene. Now her successor has gone after less than three weeks.
The key issue here was not conversion therapy, but a hoarier chestnut: the question of passing an Irish Language Act for Northern Ireland, which would put into law the commitments made by all political parties in January last year when devolution was restored. The details don’t especially matter; the point is that the DUP have made an exceptionally poor choice of battleground here.
As I wrote two years ago (scanned here) the continued presence of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom requires the Union to retain the loyalty of voters in the convinceable middle. These voters could foreseeably be persuaded to join a united Ireland, if three things happen:
Brexit turns out badly (✔️)
Unionism continues to be worse than Nationalism at appealing to its own core vote and not engaging with the centre (✔️)
There is a better offer on the table from Nationalists (currently quite far from being achieved, and in particular the need for Nationalists to find a convincing narrative on health services is even more acute after the last year).
Well, we are currently at two for three. Brexit is not working out well, and for all the DUP squawking about the evil EU imposing the Northern Ireland Protocol on them, the fact is that the Protocol is the inevitable outcome of the Brexit process which the DUP were alone among the Northern Irish parties in supporting, against the preferences of a majority of Northern Ireland’s population.
But it’s the second point that has produced many unforced errors from the DUP, including the current issue. There is no good reason to oppose an Irish Language Act. The sums of money involved are ridiculously small, especially compared with the amount of taxpayers’ money lost through the Renewable Heating Initiative scandal, which was largely on the DUP’s watch. But the money is not the important bit. The message is. And the message from the DUP is that anyone with the slightest hint of affection for the Irish language is not welcome in their vision of Northern Ireland.
I happen to live in a country with three official languages, and have looked at similar situations in a number of other places. We are no longer in the 1920s, when large parts of Europe (including the minority in Northern Ireland) found themselves under governments that they had not chosen, which a linguistic regime designed for the convenience of the locally ascendant faction. These are the 2020s. Enhanced language rights for minorities (or indeed sometimes for majorities) do not reduce the rights of anybody else. It is not a zero-sum game, unless you choose to make it so, as the DUP have done; and if you make that choice, you are probably going to end up on the wrong side of history.
To this strategic error, Poots added tactical clumsiness. We woke yesterday to the news that he had conceded that if the Assembly failed to pass an Irish Language Act, Westminster would step in and legislate, as it has done over abortion and equal marriage (also issues where the DUP were on the losing side). In other words, he stuck to a hardline position and failed to deliver, and does not even appear to have extracted any side concessions.
But the final straw appears to be that he totally failed to keep party colleagues in the loop as to what he was discussing. The Assembly convened to appoint Poots’ nominee, Paul Givan, as the new First Minister, but only four of the DUP’s MLAs actually supported the move. Party officers met in the evening and informed Poots that he had lost their confidence, and he resigned, the final act taking even less time than his defenestration of Arlene Foster (which now looks like a flash-in-the-pan tactical success rather than the fruition of a deep-seated strategic plan).
Some people saw this coming. I have had good relations with Sir Jeffrey Donaldson for twenty-five years, and I hope he will not mind my quoting a private communication here. When he lost the leadership election to Poots last month, I sent him a very brief sympathy note consisting of the two words “Next time!!!” His reply was “Could come sooner than expected……” He was right, and I guess he had a pretty clear view of the inherent weaknesses of Poots’ leadership; he would hardly have contested the election against him otherwise.
The next DUP leader (whether Sir Jeffrey or not) has a fundamental choice to make: will they continue to fight the cultural battles of the past, leading the party to cater solely for a dwindling but still significant minority of voters, and hoping against hope that Irish Nationalists do not get their act together to make the centre ground a better offer? Or will they try and create a post-Brexit Northern Ireland that actually works for all of its citizens, showing willingness to listen to the business community on how to manage the new border situation and telling their supporters that bilingual signage doesn’t take anything away from them and does make the Union more viable in the long term? It’s a question not just of the survival of the DUP but (if you care about it) of Northern Ireland as a viable part of the UK.
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
Not a lot to report. Back in Northern Ireland, the SDLP had a leadership election, and I analysed the candidates based on their internet presence and plans for party organisation. I found Alasdair McDonnell significantly more convincing on the latter point, and SDLP delegates felt the same way. Unfortunately the wheels started coming off his leadership at the very start, with a disastrous acceptance speech, and did not get a lot better over the four painful years that he remained in the position.
I gave a lecture on Northern Ireland that month to Anne’s classmates, she recently having started a teacher training course, and went straight from there to Kosovo, for the first time in ages. I also find in my archives a very blurry photograph of Neil Kinnock, taken at 7.08 pm on the 29th, but I have no idea why or where.
Wed, 13:57: RT @SamCoatesSky: ext messages from the Prime Minister to Dominic Cummings published which appear to show the PM calling Matt Hancock “tota…
17 June 1982: birth of Jodie Whittaker, who plays the Thirteenth Doctor.
also 17 June 1982: birth of Arthur Darvill, who played the Eleventh Doctor’s companion Rory (2010-2012).
17 June 2013: death of Michael Goldie, who played Jack Craddock in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (First Doctor, 1964) and Elton Laleham in The Wheel in Space (Second Doctor, 1968)
ii) broadcast and production anniversaries
17 June 1967: broadcast of fifth episode of The Evil of the Daleks. The Doctor infects several Daleks with the ‘human factor’; the consequences gradually become apparent.
17 June 1969: Jon Pertwee is announced as the new Doctor.
17 June 1972: broadcast of fifth episode of The Time Monster. The Master and the Doctor arrive in Atlantis and become embroiled in a power struggle between the king and queen.
17 June 2006: broadcast of Love and Monsters. A group dedicated to investigating the Doctor is infiltrated by Victor Kennedy, who turns out to be even more sinister than he looks.
17 June 2017: broadcast of The Eaters of Light, the only New Who story written by someone who had also written for Old Who (Rona Munro). What happened to the legendary Ninth Legion of the Roman army? What is that strange creature lurking in the dark? And why are people suddenly disappearing?
Romania, along with a slew of other Communist nations, had just established diplomatic ties with China. It was now time to exchange ambassadors. Making that formal would involve an arcane ceremony developed in Europe and practiced around the world: the designated ambassador would hand over a letter to the head of state and ask to be accepted as the official representative of his nation.
Peter Martin was a colleague of mine when I started in my current workplace, but left to go back to Beijing as a reporter for Bloomberg. He's now in Washington working Bloomberg's defence beat, but has used his time in China profitably to write this excellent book on China's diplomatic service.
The first thing to say is that this book is (thank heavens) not for the China specialist. I confess I knew far less than I should about the history of the Communist Party and the People's Republic, and because the foreign ministry, the subject of this book, was very much the creation of Zhou Enlai, Peter is clear and lucid on this complex history. Chinese diplomacy was set up from scratch in 1949, all previous Chinese diplomats having been part of the old regime; the diplomats were senior Red Army officers, with no knowledge of diplomacy and often no experience of the world outside China. The isolation of the regime by other countries did not help. It seems incredible now that Taiwan was allowed to occupy China's place at the UN for more than twenty years after losing the war. Mutual suspicion between China and its international interlocutors was deep, and for good reason.
With that unpromising start, Chinese diplomacy is very different from that of other countries. Every country of course has its own style, reflecting national characteristics. But Chinese diplomats are unusual in two respects. They tend not to make friends outside their own service, and they tend to stick to their talking points rather than actually engage in a conversation. They are happy to pick fights over protocol, even when clearly in the wrong. This is of course the result of working for a bureaucracy which is internally paranoid and conscious of vulnerability to accusations of foreign influence. At one point in the 1990s, concerned citizens started sending calcium tablets to the ministry's headquarters, to help it build some backbone.
The Ministry also had the sharp end of explaining some of the more traumatic moments of recent history. It was badly affected by the Cultural Revolution, and one gets the sense that that experience still runs deep in bureaucratic China. The Tian-an-Men massacre of June 1989 was another key moment which reversed any recent international gains for China. NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 was another low point, inflicted by the West. On the other hand, there were also successes like the Beijing Olympics, and China's rapid re-positioning as an ally in the war on terror from 2001.
Taiwan continues to be a diplomatic irritant. I've once or twice been caught in the slipstream of this one myself; I organised a Brussels speaking opportunity for the then Taiwanese government spokesman in 2000, and was struck by the number of mainland Chinese who turned up to heckle him in the audience. Twelve years later, I organised a speaking opportunity for a senior government official from one of the dwindling number of states that recognise Taiwan. In his speech, he mentioned the People's Republic favourably and Taiwan not at all. Literally before he had sat down from speaking, he had been called by both sides asking if this meant a shift of policy. He grinned, having achieved exactly what he wanted – a very small country getting two bigger, richer rivals to compete for his affections.
Anyway, this book was published literally last week, and it's a great backgrounder on China as a whole and on its undiplomatic diplomats in particular. Strongly recommended. You can get it here.
Tue, 12:56: RT @DavidHenigUK: My prediction of a few months ago that the UK would not in fact reopen substantially ahead of the rest of the EU despite…
Tue, 16:05: Tinderbox Britain: Four years after the Grenfell Tower fire, the cladding crisis rages on https://t.co/i7L7J6v8Wh Horrifying.
Wed, 10:31: Very sorry to hear this. A lovely guy and a family friend for decades. He and my father toured Brazil together in 1982! https://t.co/f4owj0QMp2
16 June 1932: birth of Norman Jones, who played Khrisong in The Abominable Snowmen (Second Doctor, 1967), Major Baker in Doctor Who and the Silurians (Third Doctor, 1970) and Hieronymous in The Masque of Mandragora (Fourth Doctor, 1976)
16 June 1937: birth of Michael Kilgarriff, who played the Cyber-Controller in The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) and Attack of the Cybermen (1985), an Ogron in Frontier in Space (1973), and the Robot in Robot (1974-75). (Face never visible, so no photos.)
16 June 1940: birth of Carole Ann Ford, who played the First Doctor’s granddaughter Susan in 1963-64. Crikey, she’s 81!
16 June 1994: death of Eileen Way who played the Old Mother in An Unearthly Child (1963), the old woman in the woods in Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966) and Karela in The Creature from the Pit (1979).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 June 1973: broadcast of fifth episode of The Green Death. The Doctor confronts BOSS, which takes control of Mike Yates. Cliff has been infected by the slime.
Second paragraph of third story (“Cardiac Arrest”):
After seventy-eight minutes of holding, the daily Pan-Pac Boeing from San Diego was signalled down on to Emergency Runway A. Careful not to infringe Chinese air space, it circled down across sea and land. The delay had been caused by a plane on a local flight, which had crashed and blocked a main runway. The passengers could see the dark smudge of smoke drawn across the field, impersonal, remote from human lives and deaths.
Aldiss is one of my favourite writers, but I don’t think this is one of my favourite collections. The best stories here I already knew from other anthologies; the others, including the title story, have mostly not been published elsewhere since they were published here, and generally for good reason. It’s still interesting to appreciate just how much the retreat from Empire affected Britain of Aldiss’s generation, and even the stories that have not stood the test of time have some great turns of phrase in Aldiss’s typically laconic descriptions. So I’m glad I finally got to it, though I suspect I may not pick it up again. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2015. Next on that pile is The Primal Urge, by the same author.
Mon, 18:35: RT @anandMenon1: This would make some kind of sense if the protocol had been imposed on the UK against its will. But the PM negotiated it,…
Mon, 21:07: RT @worldcon2021: Great news! The Hugo Voter packet – a free download of materials from Hugo Award finalists – is now available to Hugo Awa…
Tue, 10:45: RT @NotTheTimCurry: Deleting my dating apps because I want to meet someone the old fashioned way (their car breaks down on a stormy night a…
15 June 1990: death of Leonard Sachs, who played Admiral de Coligny in The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966) and President Borusa in Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983)
ii) broadcast anniversaries
None. This is the first date in the year on which no episode of Doctor Who or its various spin-offs has been premiered.
Second frame of third story ("Man-hating Madness"):
I got this in 2019 because one of the stories, "Battle for Womanhood", was up for the Retro Hugo that year, which I was administering, and it won – topping the poll at nominations stage and convincingly carrying the final ballot. I voted for it too, and on reflection I'm really not sure why; these are a weird set of stories combining an attractively subversive feminism with some pretty awful racism against the Japanese. (But the Chinese, who of course are allies and victims of Japan, are all right.) I almost gave up after the first few, which were all about Wonder Woman biffing either the Germans or the Japanese, though getting tied up a lot. Then it starts getting interesting, with weird alien creatures and ancient gods getting involved, and an interesting mentoring relationship between Wonder Woman and human girl; along with the full-figured Etta Candy and her sorority, and recurrent villains Dr Psycho and the Cheetah, and Wonder Woman still gets tied up a lot. Oh, and Steve as well.
But honestly, it's not all that good. Inspiration for what came later, of course, and it's not like any comics were especially brilliant by today's standards at the time. But I am a bit surprised at my own vote, in retrospect. Anyway, you can get it here.
This was my top unread English-language comic. Next up, if I can find it, is a slim volume called Eurofiles.
Sun, 12:46: RT @herszenhorn: Message just now from handler about Boris Johnson’s closing G7 news conference as summit host: “Unfortunately the UK does…
Sun, 15:43: Wandered into a baptism ceremony at the eleventh-century St Peter’s Church in Bertem. People have been bringing their children here for christening for a millennium. https://t.co/5OxVBwu57d
Mon, 05:58: Dreamed I had done no revision at all for my university exams. In fact I have indeed done no revision at all for my university exams, because I don’t have any. But with two students in the house who do, it’s not difficult to tell where that dream came from!
Mon, 10:45: RT @SirJJQC: A sovereign state can decide that different trading rules (or other types of rules) apply to different “countries”/“nations”/u…
14 June 1937: birth of Michael Ferguson, director of The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966), The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969), The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970) and The Claws of Axos (Third Doctor, 1971)
14 June 1985: death of Graham Leaman who played four roles in five Old Who stories: the captive Controller in The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967), Price the communications office in Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968), the Grand Marshall of the Ice Warriors in The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969), and an un-named Time Lord in Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1971) and The Three Doctors (Third Doctor, 1973). (Some dispute whether it is actually the same Time Lord.)
14 June 1998: possibly the youngest person I'll mention here, Julia Joyce played young Rose Tyler in Father's Day (Ninth Doctor, 2005), and Peter Capaldi's character's daughter Holly Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009).
14 June 2004: death of Max Rosenberg, who produced the two 1960s Dalek films.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
14 June 1969: broadcast of ninth episode of The War Games. The Doctor summons the Time Lords to deal with the situation, but is himself captured.
14 June 2008: broadcast of Midnight. The Doctor and fellow passengers on a space bus are trapped with a mysterious alien entity. I think this is the best single episode that RTD ever wrote.
14 June 2010: broadcast of Angel of the North, the twenty-third episode of the Australian K9 series. Gryffen goes in search of the Fallen Angel and finds out there's more to the alien ship then even a genius like him knew.
14 June 2016: Big Finish releases The Trouble with Drax, an audio play starring Tom Baker as the Doctor, Lalla Ward as Romana, John Leeson as K9, Ray Brooks as Drax (from The Armageddon Factor) and John Challis, Hugh Fraser and Miranda Raison in various parts. I don't normally note the anniversaries of Big Finish releases, but as it happens I listened to this at the weekend and hugely enjoyed it. You can get it here.
I discovered by chance during the week that there are two very ancient churches in villages near us. I find this fascinating. Although one thinks of Ireland as a place with a lot of ancient history, in fact there are not a lot of ancient buildings which are still in use. In the town of my birth, Belfast, the title of Oldest Building is disputed between McHugh’s Bar, behind the Albert Clock, and the Dirty Onion two blocks away on Hill Street. Neither is older than the late 17th century; the oldest buildings in New York are older than that.
Our own local church, dedicated to St Anne, is not a bad start – the tower is 11th century, but the rest is from the 18th century. However, St Peter’s Church in Bertem, a place I drive past whenever I go to Brussels, is almost entirely 11th century, and early 11th century at that.
We went and had a look at it this afternoon – it is open from 2 to 5 on Sundays. I had not realised that today was the day that churches in Belgium generally reopened after the second wave of the pandemic, and there was a lovely baptism taking place as we arrived. Father Maervoet made us very welcome.
For a thousand years, the people of Bertem have been bringing their children to this building to be welcomed into the community.
An ancient icon of the Madonna as the Seat of Wisdom sits in a protected alcove. It is thought to be twelfth century, so not quite as old as the church. (What a disappointment, eh?)
Little Karel looked about nine or ten months old; he must have been born just before the October lockdown. (Or maybe even after. He was sitting up straight and crawling, but not yet standing.)
It was really nice to see an old community building on the day that it returned to regular use.
The Bertem church is a little spoiled by a decaying 18th century portico at one corner. Who on earth could have thought that was a good idea?
But that is not all. Not ten minutes’ walk from St Peter’s in Bertem, the smaller chapel of St Verona in Leefdaal dates in part from around 900, a century earlier than St Peter’s. It is open at 8.30 on a Sunday morning, or by appointment for a small fee. (We made an appointment with Mrs R who is the head of the parish council.) The core of the chapel is the really old part.
A couple of lucky tourists happened by and were able to benefit from the chapel being opened at our request.
St Verona is the stuff of legend. She is commemorated in an 18th century statue and a 20th century stained glass window. Supposedly, she was the sister of a Holy Roman Emperor, who received a prophetic dream that she would be buried here. Other details are vague.
Unsporting philologists suggest that there was no St Verona, and the name of the hill (“Vroienberg”) became the name of the chapel. be that as it may, Mrs R is justly proud of Leefdaal’s little corner of local heritage, and gave us a good tour.
Behind Mrs R you can see two other features of local worship, which we found both in Leefdaal and in Bertem. One is a portrait of local boy Father Damien, who died in 1889 ministering to lepers in Hawaii and whose mortal remains are now in Leuven. St Peter’s, Bertem has a less chummy and slightly stern painting of him too.
The other is that both churches have statues of the Virgin and her Child, kept in glass cases for now, but ready for the moment when they can again be brought out for a procession through the town. (Bertem on the left, Leefdaal on the right.)
Finally, near the chapel of St Verona in Leefdaal you can find the spring of St Verona (in the front garden of 283 Dorpstraat). Externally it’s a not very impressive 1950s cubicle, but there is an interesting bas-relief inside depicting St Verona (in the middle) who apparently caused the spring to well up from the ground, offering comfort to two passing German pilgrims.
Belgium has only been independent since 1830, but local roots are a lot deeper than that.
Sat, 12:20: RT @gerrylynch: The Copium Wars: If I were a Brexiteer, comparing the UK in 2021 to the last decades of Qing Dynasty China wouldn’t be a ta…
Sat, 12:56: RT @UKandEU: New to our Brexit Witness Archive is @AmberRuddUK, who gives her recollections on what happened in British politics after the…
Sat, 14:48: I’d consider Irish unity, says key aide to NI’s last prime minister as he laments unionist grandees’ key error in 1945 https://t.co/G0JtMPER8d Another great piece from @sjamcbride, interviewin Robert Ramsay. Who? Read it!
Sat, 16:36: RT @DavidHenigUK: Basically with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol some members of the UK government have lost contact with reality a…
Sat, 16:37: RT @DavidHenigUK: Allegations of legal purism from those who would flagrantly break international law are puerile and dangerous. There are…
Sat, 20:18: If you like, you can tune into Essence of Wonder at the top of the hour (3pm Eastern) and watch me talk about the Hugos! https://t.co/2nMtMKPW5n
13 June 2019: death of Audrey Arlington, who played the Abbess in Eye of the Gorgon (SJA, 2007), and Mrs Poggit in Amy's Choice (Eleventh Doctor, 2010)
broadcast anniversaries
13 June 1964: broadcast of "The Day of Darkness", fourth episode of the story we now call The Aztecs. Cameca helps the Tardis crew escape, and Aztec history continues as it had always done.
13 June 1970: broadcast of sixth episode of Inferno. The Doctor and friends fight through to the Tardis console in the parallel Earth, and the Doctor escapes though the others are doomed.
Braveheart won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1995, and four others: Best Director (Mel Gibson), Best Cinematography, Best Make-up, and Best Sound Effects Editing. It lost in five categories, two to Apollo 13. The Hugo that year went to the Babylon 5 episode The Coming of Shadows.
I have seen very few films made in 1995, a year when my PhD and my brief political career were simultaneously peaking. Of the other Oscar nominees, I have seen Apollo 13 and Babe, but not Il Postino or Sense and Sensibility. Other 1995 films that I have seen: Goldeneye, The American President, Johnny Mnemonic (which is set in 2021), the wonderful Tank Girl, the brilliant Ian McKellen Richard III, and I think that’s it. Apart from Johnny Mnemonic, I liked all of them more than Braveheart. IMDB users disagree with me and have it third on one ranking and fourth on the other, behind Se7en in both cases.
Edited to add: My sister writes in to remind me that I did in fact see Sense and Sensibility at the time and told her that to my own surprise I liked it. She also points to this piece about Sense and Sensibility which includes a reflection on the contrast with Braveheart.
Here’s a trailer.
This being the sort of film it is, there are loads of actors who have also been in Doctor Who, but I’m going to start with one who wasn’t. Edward Longshanks, aka King Edward I of England, is played here by Patrick McGoohan, much more famous as The Prisoner.
There are a couple of Whovians. The biggest Who name is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-huim moment in Braveheart, where Bernard Horsfall asks Mel Gibson a pointed question about the Balliol claim to the Scottish throne. (In real life Wallace was on Balliol’s side rather than the Bruces’.) Horsfall was in several Doctor Who stories, in The Mind Robber (Second Doctor, 1968), a Time Lord in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), Taron in Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1973) and Chancellor Goth (possibly the same Time Lord as previously) in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
Rupert Vansittart plays rapey Lord Bottoms here; he went on to be General Asquith (or rather the Slitheen disguised as General Asquith) in the 2005 Doctor Who story Aliens of London / World War Three.
Michael Tierney here is the evil magistrate who kills Braveheart’s girl; a few years earlier he was an assistant to Honor Blackman in the 1986 Doctor Who story Terror of the Vervoids.
I spotted one actor who had been in a Hugo-winning film: Michael Byrne is Michael Tierney’s sidekick here, and was the main Nazi in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Noting also that Brian Cox, playing Argyle Wallace here, provided an Ood voice in Doctor Who but was not on screen. (I’m a little surprised that Alun Armstrong has never been in Who.)
OK folks, I’ll be brief: this is a violent and also silly film. Clichés abound. Great use of (mostly Irish) scenery, gallant (but occasionally treacherous) Scots, repulsive English, seductive French women, funny Irish sidekick, sanguinary combat, swirling music, culminating in Wallace’s Christ-like martyrdom. I’m rating it ahead of Platoon, my worst Oscar winner ever, because at least the characters are distinguishable and nearly interesting. I can see how it appeals to those Americans who like historical parallels to how they imagine their own revolution, and to anyone who likes a good romantic nationalist tale (which sometimes even includes me, which is why I’m not putting it at the very bottom of my list; I am neutral veering to positive on Scottish independence). But really, it’s the most utter tosh. I’m putting in 59th place out of 68, two places above last year’s Forrest Gump, just above Patton, which is more boring, and just below Mutiny on the Bounty, which carries off its clichés better.
(My observation that a parallel can be drawn between Wallace and the American War of Independence is not at all original, and was probably not original when Robert Burns invoked Wallace in his Ode on General Washington’s Birthday in 1794.)
Incidentally this is the first Oscar-winning film since Chariots of Fire, fourteen years before, to be set in Britain and the first mainly set in Scotland (Chariots of Fire of course had a number of Scottish scenes; we had Wales back in 1941). Since then we’ve had three in Asia (Gandhi, Platoon and The Last Emperor), two in Continental Europe (Amadeus and Schindler’s List) and Out of Africa. I’ll do an overall tally when we reach #70 in the sequence.
This is the second Oscar-winning film to be based on a work of epic poetry. (The first, fifty years earlier, was The Best Years of Our Lives.) The original 15th-century text of Blind Harry’s The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace is readily available online, but like most people these days I satisfied myself with the 18th century translation by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, available in a nice edition introduced by Elspeth King with impressive woodcut illustrations by Owain Kirby. You can get it here.
The opening sentence of Book III, Chapter II of Hamilton’s version is as follows, cross-referenced with the lines it is adapting from Blind Harry’s original.
When Wallace now had vanquish’d in the Field The Traitor false, that had his Father kill’d, And Brother also, that brave and worthy Knight, With many more, that all were Men of Might; He caus’d provide, and distribute their Store, To go on new Exploits, and purchase more. In Clyde’s Green-Wood they did sojourn three Days; No South’ron might Adventure in those Ways, Death did they thole, durst in their Gate appear; And Wallace’ Word did Travel far and near.
Quhen Wallace had weyle wenquist to the playne The falss terand that had his fadyr slayne; His brothyr als, quhilk was a gentill knycht, Othir gud men befor to dede thai dycht; He gert dewyss, and prowide thar wictaille; Baith stuff and horss that was of gret awaille, To freyndis about preualye thai send, The ramanand full glaidlye thar thai spend. In Clydis wode thai soiornyt twenty dayis, Na Sothren that tyme was persawyt in thai wais, Bot he tholyt dede that come in thar danger: The worde of him walkit baith fer and ner.
King warns in her introduction that “As far as the battle scenes and the incidents of killing are concerned, Braveheart is a work of restraint and good taste when compared to Blind Harry’s original text.” She’s not wrong. I must admit that the poem has a cracking pace, even with some unfortunate McGonagallisms. Like the film, it’s a bit vague on geography, but very clear about who the good guys and the bad guys are. Unlike the film, it’s mercifully discreet about Wallace’s horrible death. I’m afraid it did read like one incident of biffing the English followed by another of biffing traitorous Scots and so on, but I can see why people liked it.
